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July 7 - White History Month - 25th Most Iconic White American 12/7/20 Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), is America's first composer, the father of American music, the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century, the most recognizable American composer in other countries, and the first who made professional songwriting profitable. A melodic genius with tender, sympathetic lyrics and infectious rhythm; Fosters' songs were the first genuinely American in theme, characterizing love of home, American temperament, river life and work, politics, battlefields, slavery and plantation life. His popular minstrel songs and sentimental ballads achieved for him an honoured place in the music of the United States.Known for his parlor and minstrel music, he wrote more than 200 songs, including "Oh! Susanna", "Hard Times Come Again No More", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River"), "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer". His compositions became foundation stones of the American songbook and remain popular today. Foster was a pioneer. There was no music business as we know it (sound recording was not invented until 13 years after his death; radio, 66 years); no system of publishers and agents vying to sell new songs; no "performing rights" fees from restaurant singers or minstrels or theater musicians or concert recitalists; no way of earning money except through a 5-to-10 percent royalty on sheet music sales of his own editions by his original publisher, or though the outright purchase of a song by a publisher. There was no way to know whether or not he was being paid for all the copies his publisher sold; there were no attorneys specializing in authors' rights. Copyright law protected far less than it does today: Foster earned nothing for other arrangers' settings of his songs, broadside printings of his lyrics, or for other publishers' editions of his music. In today's music industry he would be worth millions of dollars a year.A self-taught musician, his poems and melodies were written in a simple manner with little musical embellishment or complexity. His work mirrored a kind, modest and sympathetic personality. In a sentimental style inspired by the simplicity of southern plantation music, Foster wrote such songs as "Old Folks At Home", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Oh! Susana" and "Old Black Joe". These songs, and many others from the Foster catalog, brought recognition and validity to Negro songs.His parents were of Scots-Irish and English descent. The family lived in a northern city but they did not support the abolition of slavery.Foster grew up on the urban edge of the Western frontier. Although formally untutored in music, he had a natural musical bent and began to write songs as a young boy. He absorbed musical influences from the popular, sentimental songs sung by his sisters; from Black church services he attended with the family’s servant Olivia Pise; from popular minstrel show songs; and from songs sung by Black labourers at the Pittsburgh warehouse where he worked for a time.Foster taught himself to play the clarinet, guitar, flute, and piano. He did not have formal instruction in composition but he was helped by Henry Kleber (1816–97), a German-born music dealer in Pittsburgh.Although he stated that his ambition was to become “the best Ethiopian [Negro minstrel] song writer,” he vacillated between composing minstrel songs (for which he is largely remembered) and songs in the sentimental “respectable” style then popular. He composed his first song when he was 14 and entitled it the "Tioga Waltz". The first song that he had published was "Open thy Lattice Love"; and in 1845, during a family concert at the Foster House, "Lou'siana Belle", were introduced for the first time.He published his first successful songs in 1848–1849, among them "Old Uncle Ned" and "Oh! Susanna", which became an anthem of the California Gold Rush. During this time, Foster began corresponding with E.P. Christy, leader of the Christy Minstrels, the most successful minstrel show of the time. An arrangement was made for the show to be the first to sing his songs, and the two agreed that in exchange for the introductory performances, which would bring the songs to popular attention, the sheet music credit would include "As sung by the Christy Minstrels". There is no doubt the minstrel shows were great plugs for Foster's work and the relationship was profitable for both parties. In 1849, he entered into this contract and published Foster's Ethiopian Melodies, which included the successful song "Nelly Was a Lady" as made famous by the Christy Minstrels. He moved back to Pittsburgh in 1850 and in the following six years penned more than 160 songs. It was during this period that he wrote most of his best-known songs: "Camptown Races" (1850), "Nelly Bly" (1850), "Ring de Banjo" (1851), "Old Folks at Home" (known also as "Swanee River", 1851), “Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground” (1852), "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), "Old Dog Tray" (1853), and "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (1854), inspired by his estranged wife Jane Denny McDowell (they reconciled after its publication). Foster worked very hard at writing, sometimes taking several months to craft and polish the words, melody, and accompaniment of a song before sending it off to a publisher. His sketchbook shows that he often labored over the smallest details, the right prepositions, even where to include or remove a comma from his lyrics.Foster sought to humanize the characters in his songs, to have them care for one another, and to convey a sense that all people--regardless of their ethnic identities or social and economic class--share the same longings and needs for family and home. Many of Foster's songs were of the blackface minstrel show tradition popular at the time. He instructed white performers of his songs not to mock slaves but to get their audiences to feel compassion for them. In his own words, he sought to "build up taste...among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order." Stephen Foster reformed sentimental songs in black-face minstrelsy, then the most pervasive and powerful force in American popular culture. At the same time in the 1850s, encouraged by his boyhood friend, artistic collaborator, and ardent abolitionist Charles Shiras, Foster wrote an abolitionist play himself.In 1860, the publication of "Old Black Joe" ended the exclusive relationship with the Christy Minstrels.Several of the songs Foster wrote during the last years of his life foreshadow his death, such as "The Little Ballad Girl" and "Kiss Me Dear Mother Ere I Die."His death followed the completion of his last great song "Beautiful Dreamer". Written two weeks earlier, Foster wrote in his trademark sentiment about escape from bitter realities. He left us with words and music for over 200 songs.He wrote songs in support of drinking, such as "My Wife Is a Most Knowing Woman", "Mr. and Mrs. Brown", and "When the Bowl Goes Round", while also composing temperance songs such as "Comrades Fill No Glass for Me" or "The Wife".Foster also authored many church hymns, although the inclusion of his hymns in hymnals ended by 1910. Some of the hymns are "Seek and ye shall find", "All around is bright and fair, While we work for Jesus", and "Blame not those who weep and sigh". Several rare Civil War-era hymns by Foster were performed by The Old Stoughton Musical Society Chorus, including "The Pure, The Bright, The Beautiful", "Over The River", "Give Us This Day", and "What Shall The Harvest Be?"Foster's songs, lyrics, and melodies have often been altered by publishers and performers. Ray Charles released a version of "Old Folks at Home" that was titled "Swanee River Rock (Talkin’ ’Bout That River)," which became his first pop hit in November 1957."My Old Kentucky Home" is the official state song of Kentucky, adopted by the General Assembly on March 19, 1928. "Old Folks at Home" became the official state song of Florida, designated in 1935.A public sculpture by Giuseppe Moretti honoring Foster and commemorating his song "Uncle Ned" sat in close proximity to the Stephen Foster Memorial until 2018. The statue was removed following complaints about the banjo-playing slave seated next to Foster.Two state parks on the Suwannee River are named in Foster's honor: the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida and Stephen C. Foster State Park in Georgia."I suspect that Stephen Foster owed something to this well, this mystery, this sorrow. 'My Old Kentucky Home' makes you think so, at any rate. Something there suggests close acquaintance with my people..." - W. C. Handy, Father of the Blues (1941)